The invention relates to a passenger compartment of a vehicle body having two laterally spaced vehicle doors, at least one longitudinally displaceable vehicle seat between the doors and side collision protection devices in the form of laterally extending reinforcing elements integrated in the vehicle doors and seat.
In such passenger compartments, known for example from German Patent Document DE 28 16 318 C2, with a protective device in the event of a side crash, unavoidable spaces exist between the reinforcing elements that are caused by the lengthwise displaceability of the vehicle seats and the pivotability of the vehicle doors. In a side crash, the reinforcing elements abut one another by their impact plates in the direction transverse to the lengthwise axis of the compartment, said spaces having first to be eliminated by the deformation of structural parts in a side crash before the "crash-locked" reinforcing elements act as a unit on the passenger compartment structure and act as continuous cross members to accept the forces from the side and transmit them to the entire body.
In a known vehicle seat (European Patent Document EP 0 470 413 A1), the protective device has a safety element located in the seat, said element being moved approximately horizontally into an operating position automatically from its resting position inside the seat by a device in case of danger. In the operating position, the safety elements extend up to parts of the vehicle that laterally abut the seat, for example the door sills or the center column, and abut them.
In a likewise known vehicle seat (German Patent Document DE 295 09 229 U1), the protective device comprises side protection telescopes built into the front seats, said telescopes being extended when the seat belt is put on, with the telescopes abutting the inside walls of the body on one side and abutting one another on the other side, forming a continuous cross member that stiffens the passenger, compartment in the transverse direction. Each side protection telescope in one embodiment consists of two threaded rods that can be screwed by their ends into internally threaded sections of a threaded sleeve with opposite thread pitches. The threaded sleeve is caused to rotate by a worm wheel.
A goal of the invention, in a passenger compartment of the species recited at the outset, is to improve the protective device for protecting the vehicle occupants in a side crash in such fashion that the reinforcing elements are crash-locked no later than the beginning of the lateral deformation of the passenger compartment in a crash, and form a continuous cross member to accept the forces.
This goal is achieved according to the invention by providing a passenger compartment of the above noted type, wherein at least one of the reinforcing elements exhibits an increasable length such that precollision gaps between the reinforcing elements are automatically closed by at least one collision responsive actuator operable to lengthen the at least one of said reinforcing elements so that all reinforcing elements between a respective pair of side doors operably abut one another during side collision absorbing conditions.
The passenger compartment according to preferred embodiments of the invention has the advantage that in the event of a crash, as a result of the actuator being triggered by suitable sensors, a continuous cross member is formed immediately from the individual reinforcing elements with impact plates located therebetween, said members accepting the forces from the crash side and transmitting them to the entire body and hence to the opposite side as well. Thus, at the moment of the crash, as a result of the elongation of at least one reinforcing element, all the spaces between the reinforcing elements and the impact plates are abruptly eliminated, so that before any body deformation begins, all of the reinforcing elements and impact plates abut one another in the transverse direction with no gaps.
Advantageous designs of the vehicle body according to the invention with advantageous embodiments and improvements on the invention are described herein and in the claims.